When real-life husband and wife John Middleton and Charity Jones appear in “Sexy Laundry” at Park Square Theatre, Middleton hopes the play goes more smoothly than it did when they first started dating.

“I was terrible. Just awful,” says Middleton of a 1992 Children’s Theatre Company production of “Treasure Island” in which he acted with Jones. “I was one of the bad guys, Blind Pew, and he was supposed to exude menace, but I didn’t exude anything. I was miscast and tortured by that whole thing and I knew I was awful but I had to keep going on every night.”

The subject of “Sexy Laundry” is closer to home. Quite a bit closer to home, in fact, since Middleton and Jones play a married couple in the comedy. The husband and wife in the play have hit a rough patch in their marriage, so they check into a swank hotel to see if they can work things out.

“This couple is not us but we’re able to bring enough of our own stuff to it,” Middleton says. “It’s a fine line. You don’t want to take this couple and make them exactly like us.”

The other line they maintain divides work and home.

“We’re both pretty good at dropping it when we need to drop it,” Middleton says. “We talk about the play and it is handy to have your scene partner there to run lines with, but we’re able to let it go.”

It’s the couple’s first time onstage together since 1998, in part because Middleton wasn’t always sure he wanted to continue acting. A Wisconsin native, he had heard about CTC at Lawrence University in Appleton, where he was a student of early CTC playwright Fred Gaines.

“I got to see their production of ‘Cinderella’ and I had never seen anything like it,” says Middleton, 50. “I thought, ‘That’s where I want to work,’ so I just kept coming back until I did.”

The actor loved the work but, after eight years of it, he was burnt out.

“When I left, I didn’t do any acting for a while,” says Middleton, who took an office job. “Acting is a tough way to make a living and the constant not-knowing if you’re going to have a job or what it will pay can wear on you, so I decided to diversify. But, after awhile, I started to need to do it again and so I started auditioning again after about eight years.”

This time, Middleton — who recently finished an acclaimed production of “Detroit” at the Jungle Theater and whose own play, “Prints,” premiered at Torch Theater earlier this year — thinks he will stick with acting.

“I worked with great people, so I have nothing but good things to say about working in an office, but you don’t have the intensity of experience that you do with other actors on stage,” Middleton says. “There’s an awareness of things that you don’t get in a lot of other places, and I think actors really feed on it.”

As his answers to our 10 questions reveal, it’s an intensity that hit when he saw an acting great perform while he was on a trip to England.

Q. When did you know you wanted to be an actor?

A. It was a gradual thing but I would say around 19. I was living in London and I saw Derek Jacobi in “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Afterward, everyone got in the train to go home and I just had to keep running up and down the stairs at the Barbicon Theatre because I was so pumped.

Q. What would you do if you had a million dollars?

A. I’d blow a chunk of it immediately because I’m not good with money. Then, I’d try to set something up for nephews and nieces who are looking at college somewhere along the line and then we’d do a bunch of stuff for ourselves and go on a trip.

Q. What’s your motto?

A. I should get one. I could use one!

Q. What’s your favorite place?

A. Home.

Q. Who would play you in a movie?

A. I would like to request, back from the dead, Jimmy Stewart. He’s terrific. I always wanted to be like Jimmy Stewart so, if he plays me, I would get that much closer.

Q. What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done?

A. When I was 18, 19, 20, I traveled quite a bit and it didn’t strike me as foolhardy at the time but I would just pack a bag and go. I look back at it now and go, ‘Wow. What were you thinking?’ “

Q. What are you thinking right before you go on stage?

A. I try to make sure I know what my first words are going to be, so I touch in with that. And then I just to try to be quiet and still is what I usually like to do.

Q. What was your first job?

A. I worked in a paper pulp-making plant in Neenah, Wis.

Q. What’s the best thing about your job?

A. There’s always some new research to be done. For someone who gets bored all the time, it’s good because every job has something that you get to figure out for the first time.

Q. Who do you admire most?

A. The people I admire the most are the ones who not only can keep their own stuff together but are also able to contribute meaningfully to try to make a better world. There are people locally who blow me away because they’re performers who are trying to do their own thing but they are also trying to make more sense of the world. That they have that energy blows me away.

‘SEXY LAUNDRY’

Chris Hewitt was the Pioneer Press movie critic and then an arts and entertainment reporter from 1993 to 2017.

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